On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:54:03 -0500, mm wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:34:25 -0500, "Ed Pawlowski" wrote:


"dbljay7542" wrote in message
news:ae0cfb09-859a-403f-a9f7-
...
What size wire and how many conductors do I need to wire up
telephones, thermostats, & doorbells in the house that I am building?


If you have to ask here, perhaps you should not be doing it.
Thermostats especially, Conductors vary depending on the
heating/cooling system installed.

You should be in the book store researching.

He has a good point, because there is a lot to be learned besides the
number of wires. Are you building the whole house yourself, or just
putting in the wiring?

As to phone conductors, Does Cat-5 mean 5 conductors. I think 10 is what
my house was built with and it seems like a good idea to me. The phone
company put in 4 decades before anyone used 4.


Cat 5 cable = Category 5, 4 twisted paired wires which are unshielded and
suitable for high speed digital connections. Most commonly sold as CAT
5e. Good for digital communications up to 100 Mega bits per second
(100BaseTX Ethernet protocol). Cat 5e specification by Manufactures
usually is good for 350 Mega bits per second.

The Category 5 comes from an industry standard ANSI/EIA 568 - A. That
specification deals with twist in each pair, twists between (amongst) the
pairs, and color coding.

Other common digital and communications cables are Cat-3 (seldom used)
and Cat 6 which is designed for 1000 Mega bit per second (Gigabit
Ethernet)

Normally, out of the 4 pairs, (Blue, Orange, Green, Brown) only the blue
conductors are used for telephones. Be it a 4 wire jack (RJ-11) or an 8
wire jack (RJ-45) the blue wires connect to the center two conductors on
the jack and plug. It is possible to have 4 phones on a single Cat 5
conductor.

For digital communications on an RJ-45:
Ethernet protocol (most commonly used) uses Blue and Orange pair (first
two conductors and center two conductors.)
Token Ring protocol (very uncommon anymore) uses Blue and Green pair
(center 4 conductors)

If you live in Canada, YMMV, due to an old color code specification for
wiring up wall outlets for computers and phones.